The Seahorse and All I Need Is Everything
by Jilly-chan
Summary: Alternate Reality. As young women, Noin and Une find themselves somewhat enthralled with the mysterious men who happen to pass through their rural town. A bit of a western/country feel. Noin/Zechs, Une/Treize with a twist.
1. The Seahorse

The Seahorse  
by Jillian Storm  
  
(Disclaimer: This is for Hilary and all those other poor   
souls who loyally stand by Noin's side through all those   
angsty scenes with Zechs. I've made this an alternate   
reality fic as well. The Seahorse was written by Over the   
Rhine.)  
  
"Welcome to the Goldrush. Wait till after dark. Open up the   
ceiling, we'll be kneeling, we'll be breathing on a spark."  
  
"Lucrezia? Lucrezia, girl, snap out of it."  
  
I heard her. I knew that she was trying to get my   
attention. To pull me away from my daydreams and stuff me   
back into the busy afternoon--the lifelessly dull routine.   
I was good at it, and they couldn't afford to let me   
daydream.  
  
I was imagining the sunlight reflecting off the waves of a   
blue lake framed by green prairie and trees.  
  
"Lucrezia! Watch out!"  
  
I felt someone pulling back on my shoulders, and my body   
quivered awake--suddenly feeling the burning sting along my   
left hand. I heard someone yell, "water" as my body was   
spun toward the silver pump.   
  
"What were you thinking?"  
  
"About swimming."  
  
"In a tea kettle, right."  
  
I stopped staring dumbly at my pink skin. It didn't hurt   
exactly then, I would suffer the worst of it later. My   
companion, Une, took my chin in her free hand and examined   
one of my eyes and then the other. Her lips were set in a   
small, frustrated pout. "Just great," the lips said next,   
"Perfect. Now you can't scrub in the wash basin and I'll   
get stuck doing it all for a month."  
  
"Hardly a month." I looked away from her accusing eyes. She   
was right, "Three days at the most." Already my thoughts   
were distracted, no longer by the daydream but by the   
incredible awareness of pain throbbing up my thumb and   
forefinger. I experimented by blowing on the rosy injured   
flesh. I immediately stopped, wincing again.  
  
"And when the boys ride by you'll get to play with Zechs   
until you're blue in the face from lack of breath." Une sat   
back on her heals, letting one of her arms fold   
dramatically across her forehead, conveniently also   
blocking the sunlight from her eyes. The sun was almost   
noon-high above us. "But certainly, never a lack of   
inspiration. What do you two do with all of your time, eh?"  
  
I didn't have to answer her thoughtless questions, so I   
continued to appear absorbed in my own pain. But even my   
burn couldn't keep me from considering the times that Zechs   
Marquis let me see him, stand next to him, perhaps to talk   
with him. He was one of the express riders who road the   
immediate local post circuit. He was my constant   
confrontation as I would stop washing dishes or floors or   
sheets long enough to watch him ride by with his hair   
streaming behind him like sunlight. Une had said long hair   
was ridiculous, I wondered what it would look like up   
close.  
  
And one day he had brought a package to the house, and I   
had opened the door almost out of breath from the urgent   
pounding of my heart. All I remember from that moment was   
that I was captured under the ice blue wall of his gaze,   
and that he had said, "Lucrezia, what an unusual name."  
  
"Flying kites at midnight, such a dizzy height. Up above   
the small town, pulling moonlight down and wearing it skin   
tight. You can always tell me anything at all. Think of all   
the times you've let my lips move, yeah."  
  
It was noon, and I had half stopped my working in order to   
watch him ride past our home on the outskirts of the town.   
I almost didn't see him, he moved so slowly--a shadow just   
on the other side of the clean sheets.  
  
He must have stopped in the town. He must have needed a   
drink from the pump, or something. I had caught my breath.   
Then I let it out again with the words, "What do you want?"  
  
"Today, I felt like riding for myself. And I remembered a   
pretty girl in this town with a pretty name."  
  
"And I'm her?" I had asked a little too boldly.  
  
His lips had pulled back in a cruel smile, but then it was   
gone. "Lucrezia."  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"Suddenly, I'm weightless. Gravity is mine. I see it with   
my eyes closed, what my heart knows: we must leave this   
world behind."  
  
He always stopped for me. Sometimes for the afternoon, to   
accompany me through my serving chores and then walk me   
back from the inn to my family's home on the edge of town.   
Other times, he simply slowed his horse to a walk and   
tipped his hat with a small bow of his head and the lifting   
of his gloved hand. He kept himself so well covered, as if   
to keep the sun from seeing him or to keep the sky from   
touching him.  
  
He had no reputation, no honor and no disgrace, the   
constant pony express rider who shuttled other people's   
correspondences across the dust covered terrain--bits of   
green life peeking out. So when my father asked me if the   
Pony Man was courting me, he made no attempt to end the   
affair and even approved.   
  
In my uncertainty, I feared either alternative. I needed   
Zechs Marquis to exist and I needed him to leave. Whatever   
guided my soul was beckoning me elsewhere. I could feel the   
necessity in my recurring daydreams of the water and the   
blue-green colors. Someone, or something there needed me   
more.  
  
"Cause when I wake from dreaming, it's then I'm most alive.   
Eyelids barely open, no words spoken, but you were by my   
side. You can always tell me anything at all. Think of all   
the times you've let my lips move, yeah. Oh, tell me more."  
  
He had pressed my body down against the ground until I   
could feel my life pushing out my fingertips and my toes.   
It leaked out my ears and my eyes like invisible tears.   
Simultaneously, he blew his own breath into my mouth. He   
had never seemed more solid than when he first found me   
behind the barn. I knew it was almost noon and had slipped   
from the sunlight to hide behind the shadows, hoping that   
if I missed his route once that I might escape the   
inevitability of this man's persistence.  
  
He didn't say anything besides telling me how well the   
violets and the grass looked scattered about and through my   
hair as he looked down on me. I watched him and beyond him-  
-seeing how the sparkles of his eyes captured the pale blue   
ceiling of the sky and how his hair was almost white like   
thin cloud barrier.  
  
I don't feel like squirming, I couldn't have moved much if   
I had wanted to. But I didn't want to, I became a soft   
stone statue and let him move my lips.  
  
"Oh, what you're missing. Don't you wanna see what you're   
missing? I can always tell you anything at all. Break the   
alabaster, hearts beat faster, yeah."  
  
My hand, still flushed with burned heat, was sensitive to   
the still temperatures in doors. It disliked the breezes   
blown out doors over the dry earth. The bandages stuck to   
it, rubbing like sand paper. Nothing seemed to bring a more   
sobering sense of my reality than the injury to my hand.  
  
Une was up to her elbows in soapsuds, cheerfully whistling   
a tune while she ravished the hotel sheets against the   
washboard. The tune was a familiar one, the melody   
trademark recognizably belonging to the tavern piano   
player, Treize. He was a soft-spoken man with intense eyes.   
I knew that he would never allow himself to be human enough   
to love Une, but she worshiped the idea of him.  
  
I wondered if any person was ever human enough to love   
another one. For all intents and purposes, I should have   
felt something other than obligation. Something more than   
pressure. I wondered what was missing.  
  
"You can always tell me anything at all. Think of all the   
times you've let my lips move, yeah. Oh tell me more."  
  
When he rides by at noon, he will slow his mount long   
enough to see that I am not washing. He will ride closer to   
see it I'm hidden between the drying sheets. And when he   
does not see my shadow there or in the window of my house,   
he will look behind the barn. He will see the crushed earth   
where he buried me in-between the grass blades and the   
purple violets. But I will not be there.   
  
He will not say anything, but will ride on. Never to   
return.  
  
"Oh, what you're missing. Don't you wanna see what you're   
missing?"  
  
the end. 


	2. All I Need Is Everything

All I Need is Everything  
by Jillian Storm  
  
(Disclaimer: This is a companion piece to the Zechs/Noin fic "Seahorse." I was intrigued by  
the alternate reality potential between hotel-cleaning girl, Une, and tavern-piano playing  
Treize. The song belongs to Over the Rhine--another super band, classy and mature enough  
to inspire fanfics for the older generation of Gundam Wing characters. Again, I advise you,  
alternate reality follows . . . )  
  
"Slow down. Hold still. It's not as if it's a matter of will. Someone's circling. Someone's  
moving a little lower than the angels and it's got nothing to do with me."   
  
She pulled the strands of sticky-honey colored hair back from her forehead--the hair which  
tried not to let the heat find her. But right then, she wanted to be seen. She wanted to be  
noticed. She quickly stepped up from the dirt road and set her dust-covered shoes onto the  
wooden sidewalk that skirted the edges of the mainstreet buildings. She wrapped her hair  
around itself and secured it into the image of a bun. Then she took a step forward, very  
slowly. She was going to walk past the tavern.  
  
The sidewalk was darkly covered with the building's own shadow. The sun had long passed  
over to the other side of the horizon, but the heat, the flies, still lingered. She took another  
step forward, setting her foot down softly, so she could hear the music.  
  
It was the same melody that she caught herself humming while she scrubbed the hotel  
sheets. The tune that reminded her of him. It was the very song of his being and she loved  
it more than any other in the entire universe. She wanted to be the harmony, she wanted to  
be his lady.  
  
The clatter of glasses, a few coarse phrases rising above the general chatter, the dark  
smoke a haze over the swinging door's way. If she turned, and looked inside as she walked  
by on the sidewalk. And if the men were sitting hunched over their poker games. And if the  
bargirls weren't draped over him already (that thought made her pause with dark jealousy)  
then she might see him. She might see her Lord Treize.  
  
He wasn't a lord. He was a simple musician who had come to their small, outpost town one  
day. The way he curled his fingers over the piano keys was magical and maintained enough  
of a sense of rowdiness so that Howard, the tavern owner, hired him on the spot. No one  
else played the piano in town except the minister's wife, and she would have nothing to do  
with the unruly sort who passed their days in the murk of the tavern.   
  
Une knew that the minister's wife had no business being there. No lady went into the tavern.   
But however was she to meet him?  
  
The music blew over the doors, and she turned. Casually. As if she were going to stretch  
her neck. To turn the muscles in order to free the tension. Her eyes squinted into the haze.   
Was he there?   
  
***  
  
"The wind blows through the trees, but if I look for it, it won't come. I tense up. My mind  
goes numb. There's nothing harder than learning how to receive."  
  
Une sat along the sidewalk, in front of the hotel where she cleaned the linens. She had  
finished her work for the day. She was more than ready to go home, but she sat on the edge  
of the splintery wood, recklessly swinging her legs and, every once and a while, glancing to  
the tavern doors. She would watch them swing open, examine the dirty, drunk men that the  
tavern would spew out, and wait some more.  
  
She had seen him come out once. When she had sat in a similar spot, listening to the tavern  
music. Enjoying it incredibly, intoxicated by it, and unable to un-hypnotized herself enough to  
walk away. When it had stopped she was almost asleep, drunk on contentedness, unsure of  
the time or if she were even on the same planet that she had started on. And she had seen  
him. Framed against the glow of the inner tavern.   
  
He might have looked her way, but she was uncertain if he saw her. His eyes, they were  
incredibly far seeing. He might have looked right through her and seen her spirit, shivering a  
little in the evening breeze of insecurity.   
  
"Calm down. Be still. We've got plenty of time to kill. No hand writing on the wall. Just  
the voice that's in us all. And you're whispering to me, time to get up off my hands and  
knees, 'cause if I beg for it, it won't come. I find nothing but table crumbs."  
  
"How are you, lady?"  
  
She had been distracted by the memory of seeing him, so she looked up almost expecting him  
to be watching her. Standing over her, watching her with those piercingly beautiful eyes.   
  
"Nichol? What is it?" She shades her eyes from the setting sun, setting over the tavern roof.   
Shading her eyes in order that he would not see her disappointment.  
  
"Une, ma'am, you've simply been sitting out here for some time and I wondered if you were  
waiting for someone." He coughed into his fist bashfully, "Or if I could walk you home."  
  
She had tried not to mislead Nichol as to her intentions since they were children. He had  
pursued her loyally nonetheless. Tonight she was too tired and too disappointed to bother.   
"Alright, Nichol. You may walk me home."   
  
If only she didn't need to live so properly. If only she could walk into the tavern and see him  
again. If only she could be that sort of woman for Lord Treize.  
  
"My hands are empty. God, I've been naive. All I need is everything. Inside, outside, feel  
new skin. All I need is everything. Feel the slip and the grip of grace again."  
  
She sat on the bed in her room, expressionless. Inside she felt a tearing confusion. After  
Nichol had walked her home, he had kissed her hand. She had watched, distantly, and failed to   
smile when he had met her eyes.   
  
When she thought back on the event, somehow, Nichol's workman hands had become the  
gentle, long fingers of a pianist. His wiry, dark curls had become styled, brown locks. His  
lips had become the lips of Treize. She had met the piano player outside the tavern and he  
had walked her home. He had given her one gentle kiss. He had smelled of roses.  
  
But to go into the tavern. To meet him there.   
  
"Slow down. Hold still. It's not as if it's a matter of will. Someone's circling. Someone's  
moving a little lower than the angels. This voice calling me to you: It's just barely coming  
through. Still, I clearly hear my name."  
  
"Isn't that the hotel girl?"  
  
"What's her name, Eunice? What's she doing in here?"  
  
The men at the poker table craned their necks to see who the dame was entering their sacred  
ground. The barkeeper stopped drying another glass and set it upside down on a dark colored  
towel. The circulating smoke that hovered beneath the ceiling to the height of a man's  
shoulders became still and thickened as everyone in the tavern held their breath.  
  
Une stood silhouetted in the doorway. One arm casually draped over the half door. Her  
eyes, large and white peered into the darkness surveyed her surroundings, analytically taking  
everything in the location of the bar, the gambling tables, the back stairs to the upper rooms,  
and finally, the piano. It stood silent under a low hanging light. The light touched her dark,  
long skirts and was absorbed by them.  
  
After she dreamed that he had kissed her, she knew that she must return to him. That she  
could never leave Treize's side. She belonged to him. She became the woman who could  
command a man's territory.  
  
"Jack, isn't it?" She said in a deep, womanly voice. She walked confidently toward the bar  
and fixed her gaze on the slender barkeeper. "I've come at Mr. Treize's command. Tell me  
where he is"  
  
"You . . . *ahem* . . . don't say?" The barkeeper, undoubtably Jack, picked up the clean  
glass and vigorously wiped it's insides clean. "Well, he's . . . um, upstairs, y'know."  
  
"Thank you." She glided toward back stairs. It felt to her as if she had done this before, or  
as if she had dreamed of doing it, somewhere in the back of her mind. Some part of her that  
had now come forward and was directing her movements, her voice, her thoughts.  
  
"Room six." Jack called after her, his voice pitched to obligated helpfulness.  
  
"I know." Une answered in a low, threatening voice.  
  
"I've been fingering the flame like tomorrow's martyr. It gets harder to believe. All I need is  
everything. Inside, outside, feel new skin. All I need is everything. Feel the slip and the  
grip of grace again."  
  
She went up each stair individually with military precision. Her skirts coming behind her, but  
one arm rested over her hip as if balanced on the hilt of a sword.   
  
Oblivious to the sounds coming from the doorways as she passed she followed the long  
hallway to the far end with one window facing the evening sky. Door six was on her left.   
She knocked without hesitation.  
  
After a moment it opened. Slightly rumpled, the piano player stood in the door way,  
darkness behind him, the hall light giving dimension to his features. Two wisps of hair  
tangled themselves in front of one eye.   
  
"And you are?" His voice was thoughtful.  
  
"So from now till kingdom come, taste the words on the tip of my tongue. 'Cause we can't  
run truth out of town, only force it underground. The roots grow deeper in ways we can't  
conceive."   
  
Before long the men stopped craning their necks to see the lady cross the tavern, deliberately  
walk past the bar and go up the stairs to room six. She only came after nightfall and left  
before dawn.  
  
During the day, Une, the hotel girl, would wash the sheets and during her breaks sit where  
she could hear the piano music. Wistfully wishing that she could meet the player of such  
lovely melodies.  
  
"All I need is everything. Inside, outside feel new skin. All I need is everything. Feel the  
slip and the grip of grace again."  
  
"All I need is all I need."  
  
the end. 


End file.
